Jun 22, 2013

This is huge. It is the largest documented die-off of bumblebees. Other insects such as ladybugs died too. There are reports of related insect deaths in neighboring towns. The pesticide was sprayed June 15th at the Target store location.Elliot Associates is the land management company that rents out the property "Argyle Square."For some reason, the investigation as to whether wrong-doing may have occurred is expected to take four months!

Discovery News article:

The blooming linden trees in the Target parking lot had been sprayed with Safari, a pesticide produced by Valent Professional Products, to protect the plants from aphid attack. However, the active ingredient in Safari was the chemical dinotefuran, an insect-killing poison chemically similar to nicotine. These nitotine-like pesticides, known as neonicotinoids kill bees, along with a wide range of other insects.

This die-off is an especially sad event as it occurred (is still occurring) during National Pollinator Week 2013 June 17 - 23. Please Subscribe to this blog by Email, View in your Reader or NetworkedBlogs, Like my Page www.Facebook.com/lizardmarsh, or Follow twitter.com/lizardmarsh